The Making of Year One

By GIANT1 Jun 19, 2009

Director Harold Ramis talks Year One

Harold Ramis is an icon amongst today’s comedians. Back in the 1970s he was at the center of a movement that segued comedy from the slick Hollywood stylings of Vegas showman to a more crude and creative brand of slapstick. His writing, directing and acting were centerpieces of renowned films like Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day and Animal House. And his collaborations with John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray helped facilitate a comedic changing of the guard.

In recent years however Ramis has been largely out of the limelight. That is until the Judd Apatow crew responsible for hits like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad cast him for a bit part in Knocked Up. That solidified a relationship that eventually led to a Ramis/Apatow collaboration on this summer’s Year One, which opens today. Ramis recently sat down with a group of New York press to discuss his latest film.

On what was special about Year One
The intellectual and philosophical underpinnings are so meaningful to me. Part of the premise of the movie was that no matter how far back we went, we would find that people were driven by the same needs and had the same potential awareness. I’m convinced that there had to be a hunter/gatherer there making jokes or a hunter/gatherer thinking, ”There’s got to be more to life than this.”

On what makes a good comedic pairing
I think it’s like every relationship we have with women. You usually bond with someone who’s not just like you, but someone who has what you don’t have, and you have something they don’t have. It’s usually a straight guy and a comic, or if they’re both comics, they’re two different types of comics. Michael [Cera] and Jack [Black] are a great physical pairing. Jack is a human cartoon. He’s very big, he’ll mug, he’ll do anything you ask him to do. He’ll drop his pants–you don’t even have to ask. And Michael is so introverted and subtle and real and awkward and yet he’s not really an awkward person.

On the on-set interactions between Michael Cera and Jack Black
Jack is actually a much calmer and serene person than he appears on screen and Michael is much looser and has more fun than he appears. And they’re both really good musician so we always had two guitars behind the monitors where we all sit between shots, and there was always people playing in different combinations. Jack and Michael both played and would sing in close harmony. They would even invent music.

On the Apatow writing process
They honed their writing skills around a table with a bunch of writers. They’re very collaborative. There’s this belief in the table as writers. You have an idea, you put it out to the table and everyone starts throwing ideas in, that’s how Judd works. When he first came into this project, we already had a first draft of Year One and he said “I’d like to bring three or four writers to the table, let them read the script and they’ll shoot you some ideas.” I said, “Fine bring some writers and we’ll sit down.” I think 17 writers showed up.

On working with The Office writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg
Gene graduated from the University of Iowa and he came to my office to intern the next summer. So he interned for me and then started watching my kids for me and hanging out. Then he started watching my friends’ kids and started calling himself The Manny. He was an easy-going, smart, funny guy and started writing spec scripts. He wanted to be a writer, that’s why he sought me out.

In the meantime we were having dinner in Martha’s Vineyard in Edgartown and Lee Eisenberg was waiting on us. He had just finished film school and I’m thinking, “hee’s a smart young fella.” And he never presumed. Never asked for my e-mail or office address or handed me a script. But that next season I was shooting Bedazzled in LA and producing a pilot for The WB. So Gene came to work on the pilot as a PA and Lee independently called my office and got on as a PA on Bedazzled.

They met in my office, started writing together, got a house with a bunch of other young writers and started turning out specs. They wrote a good pilot that didn’t get produced, but it got them work–it got them on “The Office” staff. They’re also writing the spec for the new Ghostbusters movie.

On the new Ghostbusters video game
The people who designed the game grew up on the movie–they’re Ghostbusters geeks themselves and there’s never been a good Ghostbusters game. They thought it was time and they wanted it to look like the film and feel like the film. So they came to us with a proposal and we all signed off. They showed us illustrations and gave us a rough sense off what the plot of the game might be and we thought, “Why not?”

We consulted at every stage of the game and the script idea was refined and refined until there was a shooting script. Then we went in and recorded our dialogue.